lowest, and, as a matter of course, their ignorance is ex- fort, refinement, and intelligence, because the advocates of And what of the master class? The picture Mr. Olmsted draws of it is hardly more flattering. The rich planters who possess two or three plantations and two or three hundred slaves, who pass the year with their families in the northern states, or in Europe, possess, of course, many of them, intelligence and refinement. But the smaller planters, who reside upon their estates, are, with few exceptions, ignorant and unpolished. They do not even enjoy the material comforts which the mechanics of the north cannot dispense with. Their houses are of the roughest and rudest kind, furnished in the scantiest, coarsest manner; no curtains, often no windows, no couch, no carpets, no mats; beds which stink, dirty linen, swarms of vermin, coarse and ill-cooked food, neither cream, tea, fruit, sugar, nor decent bread, one set of washing utensils common to the whole household, neither books nor music, scarcely newspapers. They have no amusements, no schools, no churches. Their children grow up in the midst of this dirt and discomfort, and what little hope might yet be left for them is destroyed by the contamination of the sweltering The picture is unsatisfactory enough thus far. It becomes mass of negro immorality. It is hardly possible for a lad to even worse as we proceed. The population of the slave states attain the age of fourteen without being initiated into some is not made up of masters and slaves; the bulk of it consists of the most perilous vices. In an atmosphere of lying, of a class almost as wretched and as dangerous as the blacks thieving, adultery, and cruelty, the boy must have parents of a-the "poor whites." It is upon them that slavery acts with very high order to grow up uninjured. Some such there are undoubtedly. There are excellent exceptions, but this repulsive picture photographs the mass of the small planters and many of the larger ones, that is to say, men of whom the poorest may be worth twenty thousand dollars and the richest a million. The civilization of the towns is little higher. Where the most pretensions are made, it is merely a barbaric outside. In hotels boasting silver-plated forks and candelabra, there is an entire absence of the commonest requisites of cleanliness and decency. Mr. Olmsted describes most of the towns as forlorn, poverty-stricken collections of shops, groggeries, and lawyer's offices. Indeed, he says that there are only six towns with a really town-like character in all the slave states. These are New Orleans, Mobile, Louisville, St. Louis, Charleston, and Richmond; and two of these towns are really the capitals of adjoining free districts. Mr. Olmsted dwells the more upon this absence of com the most demoralizing power. Taught to regard labour as the peculiar task of the black man, a degradation for the white, too poor to buy a slave for cash, too little trusted to obtain one on credit, they pretend to cultivate small patches of ground, but really thieve and sponge upon their neighbours. Whilst honest industry and energy would give them a competence in a short time, they sit with their hands in their pockets, watching for the blessed time when, the slave trade being suspended, a nigger may be bought for a song. Or i they live in those districts in which white men are in the habit of working for hire, they are so spoiled by the constant contact with slaves, they adopt so entirely their careless, idle habits, that their work is worth little, and all the while their children are growing up in a state of heathendom, ignorance, and immorality little raised above that of the slaves. proportion of population (white) that could not read was, at the census of 1850, three times larger in the south than in the The north; and those who can read in the south have not the opportunity of doing so. The engrossment of land and negroes by the wealthy planters tends every year to increase this wretched class. What is to be its future under a continuance of existing circumstances it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Olmsted cannot cast its horoscope, nor can we. Some southern philospher, wild at the want of labour, or annoyed at the animosity which these poor whites in those districts where they do work for hire show to their negro competitors, has proposed their reduction into slavery, and should this step ever be feasible, there will be no lack of divines and jurists to prove its legitimacy. Such are the evils. Is there any remedy? Immediate abolition is of course impossible. At the least, emancipation must be the work of more than one generation, and for that very reason the sooner it is begun the better. Had Jefferson's wise suggestions been adopted, Virginia would long since have been a free state, many times richer, and more populous than she now is. The first step is the restriction of slavery within its existing limits. At present, the partisans of slavery are madly bent on extending their bounds, and thus intensifying the evil under which they labour. The want of the south is really a larger supply of labour; the soil of the old states, although termed " exhausted," only requires a larger application of labour to make it most productive. But at the present price of negroes that application would prove unprofitable, and the slaves are bought up to exhaust cotton soils by reckless production. Let it be clearly understood that slavery is to go no further, and planters, instead of killing the goose with the golden eggs, as one of them has himself termed it, would cultivate the rich lands with a care which would preserve their fertility unimpaired. But this restriction would be far from emancipation, and although a necessary condition, is no commencement of it; nor does Mr. Olmsted specify with any distinctness his plans for gradual abolition. "The subjection of the negroes of the south to the mastership of the whites, I still consider justifiable and necessary," and most people will agree with him. We should have been glad to have had the suggestions of such a man as to the mode in which that subjection is to be gradually determined. Difficult as the task is, however, the south would soon devise a solution if it were once to recognise the desirability of emancipation. The great thing is to convince it that emancipation is for its own interest; and in spite of all the seeming pro-slavery vehemence, the times would appear to be favourable to the growth of that conviction. The one point, and it is certainly an important one, upon which we cannot entirely adopt Mr. Olmsted's conclusions, is that of cotton supply. Fully recognising the justice of his contention that intelligent and free white labour is far superior to unintelligent and driven black, we must yet doubt whether a large production of cotton would as yet be possible without slavery. It may be that the climate of the Mississippi valleys would not, as Mr. Olmsted contends, prove too unwholesome for white labourers, but we can scarcely think that white men, or even free blacks, could be found to undergo the severe labour of cotton tillage, except for a most extravagant remuneration. The experiments of the free German plantations in Texas are scarcely applicable to Mississippi. The increased price procurable for cotton picked by free labour would scarcely compensate for the advantage of production on a large scale, like that at present carried on in the Mississippi districts, and which would be scarcely possible with free labour. The question, however, is not one of instant importance. No one proposes to abolish slavery immediately, but to mitigate its burden and prepare for its early termination. During the interval much may be done to open up and render healthy the cotton bottoms; fresh modes of culture may be adopted, and machinery may be invented by which the intelligent direction of one white, or one educated negro, may accomplish as much as the brute force of ten slaves now effects. Of the generally advantageous influence of a change which should develop the intelligence of the slaves by education, more freedom of action, greater responsibility, and the prospect of liberty, it is impossible to entertain a doubt; and we can well believe that in every kind of cultivation except that of cotton, slave labour costs, as Mr. Olmsted assures us, twice as much. as free. When Mr. Olmsted wrote, the dissolution of the Union appeared rather a possibility of some ten or twenty years hence, than an immediate pressing danger. He has, however, devoted the closing pages of his book to a discussion of the relative strength of the two great divisions,-free and slave,and the consequent probabilities of success in any contest between them. At the present moment, although secession seems almost inevitable, such a discussion possesses little interest. The north has the force,-as it has the law,-on its side; but it will offer no opposition to the mad resolutions of South Carolina and her confederates. On one side are some eighteen millions of freemen; on the other, if the whole south unites, not more than thirteen millions, of whom four millions are slaves. The north is infinitely richer than the south, much of whose boasted wealth consists in slaves. There can be as little question about the right. The constitution of the United States is not a mere confederation of states, to be dissolved by each one at its pleasure; it is a form of government adopted by the whole people, and only changeable by the resolutions of a majority. South Carolina has always maintained the former doctrine, and, once before, nearly bolted out of the Union. It is likely enough that she will really do it now, and be followed by at least Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama. The southerners are an excitable, impetuous, reckless race; many of the rich are temporarily mad about slavery; the poor have nothing to lose; and a new confederation may be formed. The north will let them go, for they must soon return. At present, it is a hard task enough to keep the slaves in subjection, or to keep them at all. Then, there would be no means of retaining them; the old government would certainly not give its rebellious offshoot the benefit of a fugitive slave law. Confined in territory, unable to procure more slaves, deprived of the capital it formerly disposed of, the south would soon find it necessary to return, like the prodigal son. Whether, however, that return be made or not, secession is fatal to slavery. In the first place, it marks out its limits, beyond all future cavil; in the second, it will render its continuance unbearable to the masters themselves. The hot-headed fire-eaters of the south are preparing a rod for their own backs. They are hastening the emancipation, by the very treason which they have committed to prevent it. BURTON S. BLYTH. AN ARTIST AMONG THE TURKS.* Ar the present critical period in the history of the Ottoman empire, when an exhausted treasury, pawned revenues, a corrupt and feeble government, and a general dissoluteness of manners, point ominously to a speedy transition of the Turkish territories into the hands of new masters, any honest attempt to depict the life and condition of Constantinople has claims on attention. Mr. Thornbury is not a politician, still less is he a statician. We are not aware that he is ambitious to be regarded as a persevering student of European history. Readers, therefore, may not go to his book for information on the commerce, fiscal arrangements, and diplomatic relations of "the sick man." Mr. Thornbury is an artist, with a quick eye for character, and the picturesque points of city or field, and whatever he chances to observe,-the huckstering of the market or the uproar of the prison, the babble of the bazaars or the religious rites of the mosque,-he communicates truthfully and with much spirit, evincing, over and above the buoyant good-humour of a well-educated and wellbred Englishman, a certain restlessness of fancy and nervous irritability which give an idiosyncratic colouring, by no means unpleasant as a change, to all his works. The most distinctive portions of the present volumes are those which relate to the art and architecture of Constantinople. They include most interesting descriptions both of the sacred edifices and the domestic buildings of the Turks. The greater number of the latter are slightly constructed of thin scantlings of oak, nailed together, boarded outside with deal, and painted red. Built to last sixty years, they are • Turkish Life and Character. By WALTER THORNBURY, Author of Life in Spain. Smith, Elder, and Co. usually burnt down in ten. Seldom does a fortnight elapse worthies to whom we are introduced as our exemplars,"without a terrific conflagration. When two inhabitants of amongst them are the King of Portugal and Lord ShaftesConstantinople have exchanged morning salutations, their bury,-only a very small proportion belong to the class to three first questions are,-" What is the exchange?" "Who is which Lord Stanley referred. That a book, however, origi the Prime Minister ?” and “Where was the fire last night ?"nated in a suggestion which it fails to carry out, is not neces The exchange is always going up, the minister is always sarily a ground of objection. On the contrary, if Lord Stanley going out, and the fires are always going on. These wood directs us to search for the philosophers' stone in the biogra houses, however, as well as their old style of furniture, are phies of rich and eminent men, we may rejoice when we disbeginning to disappear before the innovations of that fashion cover that our search has diverged to the discovery of which makes the Turks delight in the bijouterie and clocks examples of health-giving virtues in the lives of men and of Paris and the printed cottons of Manchester, and which women rich only in hope, and eminent only in charity. causes them " even to neglect their own incomparable car- William and Robert Chambers, the eminent authors and pets for those of England and France." The Stamboul of the publishers, are almost the only two of our twenty-nine middle ages was a glorious city, bright with colour; but the "exemplars" who can be described as men who have risen few remaining traces of its ancient splendour daily grow to wealth and eminence by the exercise of their own powers fainter, and ere many years elapse it will be as dull as London. of mind and body,”—and even they don't quite fulfil Lord Dress amongst the Turks is in the same transition state as Stanley's condition of having "risen from the humbler architecture, the Turkish men of the world daily adopting classes." Born at Peebles, about the commencement of the more and more the inventions of European tailors, whilst the present century, of parents whose circumstances enabled them ladies and clergy, with a conservatism inseparable from them to educate their children in a refined, though simple, mode of in all quarters of the world, still cling obstinately to their life, they had just begun to indulge in those literary pursuits ancient costume. The compromises between old barbarism to which their temperament prompted them, when a sudden and new civilization are often sufficiently amusing. "You reverse of fortune rendered it necessary that they should at will see a man with an enormous turban, a long beard and once enter upon the work-day business of life. Literature, pipe, and a furred pelisse, finished off with white stockings which had been their pleasure, they now resolved to make and costermonger's boots." And as in dress, so in nearly all their means of livelihood. Declining, however, to imitate other matters. It is only in the relations between the sexes Chatterton, and never thinking of running up to London to that tradition and usage seem to have fully maintained their starve on the compilation of prefaces and political pamphlets, ground. they took small shops, and dealt in books,-the wares of which they were fondest, and with which they were best acquainted. Successful in the business they had thus chosen, they were soon enabled to take a step in advance, and from booksellers grew to be publishers. Among the works which they gave to the world in the latter capacity were some from their own pens, which gained distinguished and widely extended notice. But the two brothers were not only keen. sighted tradesmen and accomplished writers. They were men of original minds; and, while still young men, being at the time little more then thirty, took a step which must ever retain for them a prominent place in the literary history of their country. By the establishment of their celebrated Jonrnal they raised, within a very short time, the standard of literary taste amongst the great mass of general readers throughout Great Britain, and struck a key-note which is responded to in all the well-conducted periodical literature of the present day. Within two years from the date of its establishment, their Journal reached a weekly sale of 50.000 copies. Two of their subsequent publications, the Informa tion for the People and the Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Literature, obtained a still more remarkable degree of success, the weekly sale of the former having at one time been 130,000 copies, and that of the latter 150,000 copies. The career of the two brothers as publishers is, however, so well known that we need not dwell upon it; nor need we do more than allude to the works on social subjects of William Chambers, and the scientific writings of Robert Chambers. But there is one circumstance connected with their business career which is not generally known, and which should not be forgotten when we include them among our exemplars." It is that, during all the years they have been in business, they have never once put their names as acceptors to a bill of exchange. The Turkish prisons and madhouses visited by Mr. Thornbury exhibit the same dreary features of woe and degradation, and the same brutal indifference to human suffering, that characterized our own Bridewell and Bedlam in the last century. At their funeral observances, the Turks, usually so grave and slow, rush along as if drunk with joy, bearing their ghastly burden to a tomb in which he is laid without a coffin. The absence of any coffin is perhaps one cause why the Turkish grave has a tendency to cave in, thereby affording the wild-dog no trifling aid in his labour of exhuming dead bodies. Another and more potent cause, however, of this tendency of Turkish graves consists in the Mussulman custom of leaving a passage open between the corpse and the outer air. This hole into the chamber of the buried is said to be left in case the dead should wish to renew his intercourse with his old friends; but the usage is more probably a relic of the old classic fashion of leaving a channel of communication from the living world to the upper floor of their double-roofed tombs, through which libations of honey, milk, and wine could be sent down as offerings to the manes of the departed. Be that as it may, the pernicious effects of these loopholes for the escape of a pestilential miasma can be imagined. It was to counteract their noisome exhalations that the cypress was first planted in Mahometan burialgrounds, just as aromatic herbs were originally sprinkled before the prisoners in our criminal courts in the hope that the odour would neutralize the baneful effluvium coming from the occupants of the dock. Mr. Thornbury has the good sense not to affect to be what he is not. He is neither savan nor sciolist,-neither political economist nor moral philosopher. As an artist he tells the story of his travels, and those who sympathize with an artist's views of life will read him with pleasure. In singular contrast with the story of the brothers ChamA GALLERY OF WORTHIES.* bers, is that of Christopher Thomson, one of the little band FOR the present work we are indebted, according to its preface, of poets and artists who delight to be known as "Sherwood written by Lord Brougham, to a suggestion made by Lord Foresters." The son of a sailor, who had given up seaStanley, "at a gathering of mechanics institutions, held at faring life and had settled down as the landlord of a Accrington, in November last," to the effect that "a biogra-public-house at Hull, Thomson was left, as a child, phical work of great interest might be written, describing the rise and progress to wealth and eminence of men who, by the exercise of their own powers of mind and body, have risen from the humbler classes." That such a suggestion should have led to such a work is a remarkable instance of the tortuous course of human affairs, for of the twenty-nine • Our Exemplars, Poor and Rich; or, Biographical Sketches of Men and Women who here by an extraordinary use of their Opportunities benefited their FellowLondon: 1801. to pick up such habits and acquirements as chance or taste might direct, and it is therefore not matter for surprise that when he had to betake himself to some money-making avocation he attempted half-a-dozen, one after the other, with little success. Turned out of a linendraper's shop on account of his uncouthness, he first took to brick-making, then abandoned the making of bricks for the making of pottery, and then became an apprentice in a shipbuilder's yard, where he appears to have imbibed a taste for Method one of 66 ism and the stage, strangely dividing his time between fervent religious observances and the acting of plays under difficulties. Disgusted with ship-building, he was no sooner out of his time than he threw himself on board a whaling vessel, and made a voyage to the Greenland seas as carpenter's mate. Still dissatisfied, he returned, determined never to go to sea again, and his next step was to marry the daughter of a veneer sawyer, and adopt the business of his father-in-law. That business was soon afterwards ruined by the introduction of machinery, and before long, after some severe struggles, Thomson found himself, or at least thought himself, compelled, for the sake of daily bread, to join a company of strolling players. Daily bread and nightly lodging, however, were doled out to poor Christopher and his family with such sadly niggard hand during these strolling days, that, after a dreary period of suffering, he threw aside the buskin for ever, and settled down at Edmistowe, in Sherwood Forest. We now begin to find him worthy of being our exemplars," and to perceive that his previous erratic, if not vagabond, course of life was a protracted school-time, during which he was being gradually prepared to take a high degree in Literis Humanioribus. Such men as Christopher Thomson are the backwoodsmen of life; they have rough work to do, and the training which fits them to do it must, of necessity, be rough also. Thomson had no sooner become settled at Edmistowe, than he found opportunities of turning to most useful account the experience he had gained during his checquered career. A great movement was just then taking place throughout the whole body of the working population of England. A few true principles had been made the basis of many false theories. Trade unions, "friendly societies," and "fellowship" in all sorts of forms and under all sorts of titles, had become the distinguishing features of artizan life, and Christopher Thomson became one of the most zealous promoters of these institutions. But he was enlightened as well as zealous, and in a very short time he found himself engaged in a desperate battle with narrow views and old prejudices. He found "benefit" societies based on principles such as would sooner or later render bankrupt the richest insurance office in the world, and he said so; he found trade unions promulgating political views inconsistent with the preservation of society, and he exposed them. For a while, of course, he became the object of a bitter hatred and persecution; but he had seen too much, and suffered too much, to be easily frightened, and after a time he found his path becoming clearer. Men celebrated throughout the civilized world for their talents, heard of his exertions, and gave him an encouraging smile. He found himself famous, when he had only considered himself laborious. But his fame was well earned; and in the political history of the working classes of England the name of Christopher Thomson must ever have a place. We have not attempted to follow him through all the phases of his chequered career; he is not presented to us as an "exemplar" in every portion of his life, but only in that portion of it in which, under great difficulties, he made even the disadvantageous circumstances of his life tend to the benefit of his fellow-men. But we must not forget to mention the haven of art in which he has at length found comparative rest. Yes; he is now an artist! He had been learning something new in every preceding year of his life, and at fifty-four he found that he was not too old to learn the art of landscape painting. An earnest mind can acquire knowledge quickly; an observant one can readily make use of knowledge. Being the work of a man both earnest and observant, Mr. Thomson's pictures have long since ceased to be merely creditable,--they have become saleable. A place amongst our exemplars" is given to Sir Roland Hill, who has multiplied the social intercourse of the world to an almost immeasurable extent, and extended to the poorest what was formerly the exclusive privilege of the rich. In his earlier years he applied himself with great ardour to mechanical science, and invented, besides other ingenious things, a new kind of printing machine, in which the types were set around a cylinder, which could produce impressions with immense velocity. Dulness and prejudice having discovered in his type-armed cylinder a thousand fatal imperfec tions, which subsequent experience has proved to be nonexisting, he threw aside his invention in disgust, and turned the energies of his active mind in another direction. Happily for his country, the subject which caught his attention was the post office and now began one of those great battles which are always being fought, more or less openly, between the man of original views and the great army of routine. As was the case with Blucher, routine is nearly always vanquished in the end; but, as was also the case with Blucher, routine is always ready to renew the contest. In 1837, Rowland Hill published his plan of a penny postage, and the splendid project overran the three kingdoms like wildfire. It was received with acclamations by every one, except persons in power, or connected in any way with office. The ministry shook their heads at it; the opposition did not like it; but the unanimous voice of the people demanded its adoption. Their voice was obeyed; and on comparing the year 1839, the year immediately preceding the adoption of penny postage, with the year 1859, we find that between those two dates the number of post offices in the United Kingdom increased from 4,028 to 11,412; that the number of letters passing annually through these offices increased from 76,000,000 to 5 15,000,000; that the gross annual revenue increased from £2,370,763 to £3,299,825; that the number of money orders issued per annum increased from 188,921 to 6,969,108; and that the amount of money remitted per annum by money orders increased from £313,124 to £13,250,930! Of the ten women and nineteen men, the story of whose lives is told in the volume before us, all but John Bunyan and John Smeaton are of our own day. Amongst them are representatives of every rank, from the King of Portugal, who, in 1859, when the yellow fever broke out in his capital, occupied himself so assiduously in personal attention to the sick, visiting the hospitals night and day, to John Plummer, the deaf and lame journeyman shoemaker of Kettering, whose pamphlet against strikes was eulogized so highly by Lord Brougham in his speech at the Social Science meeting at Liverpool in 1858. The book is edited by Mr. Commissioner Hill, and is much the best collection extant of biographies of men and women "who, by an extraordinary use of their opportunities, have JOHN STEBBING. benefited their fellow-creatures." CHINESE WARFARE. THE Chinese themselves are essentially an unwarlike race, and their unquestionable ingenuity, and their marvellous imitative powers, have been chiefly exercised in the peaceful pursuits of husbandry and architecture, in textile and fictile manufactures, and in the sciences of astronomy and navigation. Comparatively speaking, undisturbed during the rise and fall of Assyria, Greece, and Rome, subsequently deserted during the vast migrations westward from Central Asia, and thus, as it were, isolated from the rest of the civilized world, the Chinese spread out into a vast and populous kingdom, but never were destined to become a conquering race, and none but conquerors have ever developed, or advanced, the art of war. Even the Tartarian masters of China overran it so readily, and held its pacifically-disposed people in such easy subjection for centuries, that their decided military preparations received no great impulse, and, indeed, no decided opportunity for improvement. With no more highly-cultivated external enemies to combat, with no distant territories which they desired to win, and no serious struggles against their assumed authority, the Tartars, though sufficiently bold, and wellinclined to the soldier-life, could never develop a high system of military organization. It is true that internal rebellion has from time to time threatened the Tartar dynasty; but the helpless rebels, though formidable in numbers, have been less apt in military matters than their Tartarian masters, and the contests between them have, therefore, taught no useful lesson to the latter. As to their collisions with European powers, these have been as yet so few, so limited in extent, and so far between, that though they have had the effect of an imperfect education in the art of war, much more of the same instruction will be required to enable the Chinese Tartars to cast aside those traces of barbarian imperfections which they now exhibit in nearly all that relates to their fighting establishments. By the officers who accompanied the celebrated embassy of having wooden handles and iron hilts. Some are very plain, Lord Macartney to Pekin in 1793, it was estimated, on the and as if made out of pieces of iron hoop; whilst others are authority of a native officer, that the army of the Emperor, more highly finished, and of good manufacture. Nearly all including Tartars and Chinese, then consisted of 1,800,000 are armed with spears, ranging from seven to nine feet in men, of whom one million were infantry, the rest cavalry. length, made of bamboo or of wood, the handle part only Judging from what was observed by the embassy, the num-painted green, and carrying a simple spearhead of iron, and ber assigned to the infantry was thought not unlikely to be ornamented below that with a red or green tuft, composed true, but very few cavalry were seen. On the occasion of variously of string, or cloth, or silken cord. Their bows, the Emperor's anniversary, at a grand display in presence however, are their characteristic national hereditary weapon, of the embassy, it was calculated by Captain Parish that not and on these by far the greatest ingenuity and constructive more than 80,000 troops were present. On another occasion talent are expended. The best of them are highly finished, and of a ceremonial kind, only 1,200 were on the field, and the are very beautiful. They are about four feet long, straight in usual number which was trained up to receive and salute the the middle, and curved towards the string at each end. They passing travellers at each garrison town did not exceed 300. are built up of a central front, usually of wood, into which two Their numbers, it may be fairly concluded, were inconsistent long tapering slices of buffalo horn, nicely shaped and polished, with the exaggerated statements as to their total force. In are securely fastened with cord or silk, for the elastic ends of the operations of the Portuguese at Macao,-in our own pro- the bow. The string is usually of tendon or gut, and merely ceedings against the Bogue Forts, and at Canton, Chusan, slips into a notch, cut in the bone, at each end of the bow. Shanghai, and Nankin, in our first repulse before the Taku The arrows are of wood, two to three feet in length, nicely Forts, in their recent capture, and in our final advance to trimmed, feathered widely in three rows, and tipped with an Pekin the other day, the numbers of the Chinese army iron point, which is either like a nail fitted into the wood, brought up against us, and actually visible in the field, have or is fitted over the wood. The bows are very strong; and in been ridiculously small as compared with their boasted drawing them, the thumb is often protected by a piece of strength. The repeated defeats of the regular army by the agate which receives the string. As a rule, the Tartar horseTaiping rebels has doubtless crippled its force, but probably man also carries a matchlock, and thus, besides his bow, is not to so great an extent as that to which truth has curtailed encumbered with another very inefficient weapon. This rude the extravagant misrepresentations of the deceitful govern- form of gun is a small one and of native manufacture. Though ment. The Chinese army appears indeed to be like their Sir George Staunton, in his account of the Macartney Emlanthorns, a slip of paper, and the belief long entertained is bassy, mentions iron helmets, and a sort of defensive now pretty generally looked upon as correct, that the Chinese armour, our informant noticed neither; but the regular dress army is a myth. The largest number of soldiers seen at any consisted of loose trowsers and jacket of cotton cloth, a black one time in the recent advance from the mouth of the Peiho felted Tartar cap, and clumsy boots made of cloth, or in the to Pekin, has been from 18,000 to 20,000,-this being the case of the officers, of silk, with thick paper soles. A circumost that could be mustered and interposed between the lar belt serves to suspend the pouch for flint and steel and outer barbarians, and to them, at least, the maiden capital of tobacco, and also the little wooden tubular boxes, like bodkin the flowery land. The most bare-faced impositions have cases, or like the snake-in-the-box toy of our early days, in been offered to European credulity and good faith; and the which their separate charges of gunpowder are carried. hypothesis is not altogether an untenable one, that the These little tubes, from twelve to twenty in number, each continued isolation of the Chinese empire from contact with covered with a tight-fitting rounded cap or lid, are sometimes, other civilization, springing at first from jealousy, at length in the case of the smarter soldiers, supported in a small became necessary to avoid the exposure of the truth, and wooden frame, full of corresponding holes, which is itself that in fact, a regular policy of exclusion has been adopted fixed to the body belt. The indispensable case, containing a by the lying mandarins, to avoid the bursting of their great knife and two chop sticks, is carried by every soldier; and bubble of misrepresentation. what our friend spoke of as the "swells" of their corps, have a small luxury, in the shape of a little glass scent-bottle, like a miniature gourd, coloured red or yellow, and containing tiny black pills, of a musky odour. In the most recherché of these, a little silver spoon is found, with which the aforesaid balls are, no doubt, gracefully inserted up the owner's nose! Such is a Tartar Light Hussar, complete. We forget: a few of them carry a sort of two-fold iron hook, shaped like an open letter "S," and attached to the end of a pole, six or seven feet long: the terminal part is blunt, and is intended to serve as a hook, by which to pull an enemy from his horse, by catching him round the neck,-hence, there is some sense in the saying of "That's catching a Tartar:" the part nearest the handle is thicker, describes a larger curve, and is sharpened on its concave edge, so that if slipped over the neck, it will remove an enemy's head, or, at any rate, gash his throat. If the numbers of the Chinese army have been so grossly misapprehended, but little that is precise is known of its recruitment, its organization, and its discipline. Upon these imperfectly understood subjects it is not our intention to enlarge, but we will endeavour, at the present juncture, through the valued assistance of notes furnished to us by an eye-witness of the capture of the Taku Forts and of some of the subsequent proceedings of the allied army, to furnish the reader with an original account (not obtained from books) of the various implements of war, offensive and defensive, employed by our recent enemies in their forts and in the field, during a campaign of which they themselves had full notice, and for which, therefore, they had ample time to make all such preparations and provisions as their military science and means would enable them to make. We shall begin with the famous Tartar cavalry. The soldiers comprising this force are tall and powerful men, of a sallow, bilious complexion, having invariably black hair, some wearing a moustache and some not, but none wearing the beard, which, it seems, they generally pull out. They are mounted on the little strong bay Tartar horses, which are scarcely bigger than ponies, never exceeding twelve hands high, and are of all colours, and frequently spotted, though brown, as usual, is the prevailing hue. These are active, enduring, and valuable horses. The body of the saddle is of wood only, with no iron fastenings, but merely holes cut for the reception of the stirrup leather and crupper, which is also of leather or bull's hide. This wooden foundation is well padded and covered with cloth, and forms a light and most comfortable saddle. The reins and head gear are likewise of leather or hide. The stirrups are of iron, and are so wide at the base as to present most equal-sided, triangular opening for the foot. These are all armed with light and slightly curved swords, The infantry are also mainly Tartars in the north; but doubtless these, and especially in the south, are mixed with Chinese. Their ordinary dress is well known; it is often very showy; but in action, at least, it was found that most of them wore a very coarse yellow cotton cloth or canvas material, dyed on bamboo with pigments of other colours. Their arms consist in some cases of a short, indifferent sword, and a shield,in some cases of a spear besides, in others of a matchlock,— and, as has been observed in the south, even of muskets and bayonets. Different bodies, corresponding to our regiments, are differently armed; but in the field they fought without distinction. We must not omit to mention the famous Tiger infantry, whose tawny yellow dresses, made up into one article of costume, are put on, so that the legs and arms are received into sleeves or leggings corresponding with the animal's limbs, and a sort of hood or cowl comes over the neck and bead. In this comical garb, in which the occupants look like |